Someone pins a ballad on my saddle when I am about to ride. I scan the lines; it is predicting the sun of York shining on England again and everyone being happy. At once I rip it from the pommel and take it to the king, leaving my horse waiting in the stable yard.

“I thought you should see this. What does it mean?” I ask Henry.

“It means that there are people who are prepared to print treason as well as tell lies,” he says grimly. He twitches it out of my hand. “It means there are people wasting their time setting treason to music.”

“What are you going to do with it?”

“Find the man that printed it and slit his ears,” he says bleakly. “Cut out his tongue. What are you going to do?”

I shrug as if I am quite indifferent to the poet who sang of the House of York, or the printer who published his poem. “Shall I go riding?” I ask him.

“You don’t care about this—” he gestures to the ballad in his hand “—this dross?”

I shake my head, my eyes wide. “No. Why should I? Does it matter at all?”

He smiles. “Not to you, it seems.”

I turn away. “People will always talk nonsense,” I say indifferently.

He catches my hand and kisses it. “You were right to bring it to me,” he says. “Always tell me whatever nonsense you hear, however unimportant it seems to you.”

“Of course,” I say.

He walks with me to the stable yard. “At least it reassures me about you.”

Then my own maid whispers to me that there was a great stir in the meat market of Smithfield when someone said that Edward, my little cousin Teddy, was escaped from the Tower and was planting his standard in Warwick Castle, and the House of York was rallying to his cause.

“Half the butcher apprentices said they should take their meat cleavers and march to serve him,” she says. “The others said they should march on the Tower and free him.”

I dare not even ask Henry about this, his face is so grim. We are all trapped inside the palace by the icy winds and sleet and snow that fall every day. Henry rides out on frozen roads in a quiet fury, while his mother spends all her time on her knees on the cold stone floors of the chapel. Every day brings more and more stories of stars that have been seen to dance in the cold skies, prophesying a white rose. Someone sees a white rose made from the frost on the grass at Bosworth at dawn. There are poems nailed to the door of Westminster Abbey. A gang of wherry boys sings carols under the windows of the Tower, and Edward of Warwick swings open his window and waves to them, and calls out “Merry Christmas!” The king and his mother walk stiffly as if they are frozen with horror.

“Well, they are frozen with horror,” my mother confirms cheerfully. “Their great fear is that the battle of Bosworth turns out not to be the end of the war but just another battle, just one of the many, many battles that have been. So many battles that people are forgetting their names. Their great fear is that the Cousins’ War goes on, only now with the House of Beaufort against York instead of Lancaster against York.”

“But who would fight for York?”

“Thousands,” my mother says shortly. “Tens of thousands. Nobody knows how many. Your husband has not made himself very beloved in the country, though God knows that he has tried. Those people who served him and had their rewards are looking for more than he can bring himself to give. Those that he has pardoned find they have to pay fees to him for their good behavior, and then more fines as surety. This king’s pardon is more like a punishment for life than a true forgiveness. People resent it. Those who opposed him have seen no reason to change their minds. He’s not a York king like your father. He’s not beloved. He does not have a way with people.”

“He has to establish his rule,” I protest. He spends half his time looking behind him to see if his allies are still with him.”

She gives me a funny sideways smile. “You defend him?” she asks incredulously. “To me?”

“I don’t blame him for being anxious,” I say. “I don’t blame him for not being the sweet herb of March. I don’t blame him for not having a white rose made of snow or three suns in the sky shining on him. He can’t help that.”

At once her face softens. “Truly, a king like Edward comes perhaps once in a century,” she says. “Everyone loved him.”

I grit my teeth. “Charm is not a measure of a king,” I say irritably. “He can’t be king based on whether he’s charming or not.”

“No,” she says. “And Master Tudor is certainly not that.”

“What did you call him?”

She claps her hand over her mouth and her gray eyes dance. “Little Master Tudor, and his mother, Madonna Margaret of the Unending Self-Congratulation.”

I cannot help but laugh but then I wave my hand to still her. “No, hush. He can’t help how he is,” I say. “He was raised in hiding, he was brought up to be a pretender to the throne. People can only be charming when they’re confident. He can’t be confident.”

“Exactly,” she says. “So no one has any confidence in him.”

“But who would lead the rebels?” I ask. “There’s no one of age, there are no York commanders. We don’t have an heir.” At her silence I press her. “We don’t have an heir. Do we?”

Her eyes slide away from my question. “Edward of Warwick is the heir, of course, and if you’re looking for another heir to the House of York, there is your cousin John de la Pole. There’s his younger brother Edmund. They are both Edward’s nephews just as much as Edward of Warwick.”

“Descended from my aunt Elizabeth,” I point out. “The female line. Not the son of a royal duke, but the son of a duchess. And John has sworn loyalty and he serves in the privy council. Edmund too. And Edward, poor Teddy, has sworn loyalty and is in the Tower. We have all promised that he would not turn against Henry and we have all taught him to be loyal. In truth, there are no sons of York who would lead a rebellion against Henry Tudor—are there?”

She shrugs. “I’m sure I don’t know. All the people speak of a hero like a ghost or a sleeping saint, or a pretender. It would almost make you believe that there is an heir of York hidden out in the hills, a king waiting for the call to battle, sleeping like the true Arthur of England, ready to rise. People love to dream, so how should anyone contradict them?”

I take her hands. “Mother, please, let’s have the truth between us for once. I don’t forget that night, long ago, when we sent a page boy into the Tower instead of my brother Richard.”

She looks at me as if I am dreaming, like the people who hope for King Arthur to rise again; but I have a very clear memory of the poor boy from the streets of the City, whose parents sold him to us, assured that we needed him for nothing more than a little playacting, that we would send him back safely to them. I put the cap on his little head myself, and I drew up the scarf around his face, and warned him to say nothing. We told the men who came for my brother Richard that the little boy was the prince himself, we said he was ill with a sore throat and had lost his voice. Nobody could imagine that we would dare to create such an imposter. Of course, they wanted to believe us, and the old archbishop himself, Thomas Bourchier, took him away and told everyone that Prince Richard was in the Tower with his brother.

She does not glance to right or left; she knows that no one is nearby. But even alone with me, speaking in a whisper, she does not confirm or deny it either.

“You sent a page boy into the Tower, and you sent my little brother away,” I whisper. “You told me to say nothing about it. Not to ask you, not to speak to anyone, not even to tell my sisters, and I never have. Only once you told me that he was safe. Once you told me that Sir Edward Brampton had brought him to you. I’ve never asked for more than that.”

“He is hidden in silence,” is all she says.

“Is he still alive?” I ask urgently. “Is he alive and is he going to come back to England for his throne?”

“He is safe in silence.”

“Is he the boy in Portugal?” I demand. “The boy that Uncle Edward has gone to see? Sir Edward Brampton’s page boy?”

She looks at me as if she would tell me the truth if she could. “How would I know?” she asks. “How do I know who is claiming to be a prince of York? In Lisbon, so far away? I’ll know him when I see him, I can tell you that. I will tell you when I see him, I can promise you that. But perhaps I’ll never see him.”










THE TOWER OF LONDON, SPRING 1487

We move to the Tower as if Henry no longer loves his country palace in springtime, as he swore that he did, only last year. This year, he feels the need of a castle that is easily defended, as if he wants his home to dominate the skyline, as if he wants to be in the heart of the city, unmistakably its lord; though everyone talks of another, from the drovers coming into Smithfield discussing a priceless white ram glimpsed on a dawn hillside, to the fisherwomen on the quay, who swear that one dark night, two years ago, they saw the watergate of the Tower slide up in silence and a little wherry come out under the dripping gate which carried a boy, a single boy, the flower of York, and it went swiftly downstream to freedom.